Junk the prize and keep the peace

The problem with peace awards is that they are capable of engendering war, of the verbal kind at least. And so it has come to pass with the awarding of the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize to Palestinian activist Dr Hanan Ashrawi.

Ostensibly this is a Sydney gig, being sponsored by Sydney University and supported by the City of Sydney. However, due to Ashrawi's high profile, it has become a national and, to some extent, an international issue.

Alexander Downer was quizzed about this when interviewed on the ABC TV Insiders program last Sunday. The Foreign Minister commented that over the past year, Ashrawi wouldn't be one of the three or four people he would identify as having made a major contribution to the peace process in the Middle East.

He added that if you wanted to choose a Palestinian, you'd choose someone like Abu Mazen, who made an enormous effort to bring about the road map and implement peace. Mazen recently stepped down as Palestinian Authority prime minister after a falling-out with Yasser Arafat.

It comes as no surprise that the decision by the Sydney University-based Sydney Peace Foundation to award the 2003 prize to Ashrawi has caused controversy, especially since the Premier, Bob Carr (who has a record of supporting Israel's right to exist within secure borders), will present the prize at Parliament House on November 6.

Stuart Rees, director of the Sydney Peace Foundation, was also interviewed on Insiders last Sunday. He told Barrie Cassidy that what was at stake in the debate about the prize turned on what we are allowed to discuss in this country without fear or favour. He asserted that controversial issues like Israeli-Palestinian relationships, or even the issues about the men held in Guantanamo Bay, seem to be off the agenda.

Rees claimed that there's too much fear to speak a word concerning such matters and praised the courage of Green senators Bob Brown and Kerry Nettle for confronting George Bush in Canberra on Thursday.

In any analysis, this is a significant exaggeration. There is plenty of discussion in Australia about the Middle East. Ditto the situation of the two Australians held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay on account of the allegation that they trained with the terrorist group al-Qaeda.

But there is genuine disagreement about whether, in light of the situation in the Middle East, Ashrawi is a suitable recipient of a peace prize. And many Australians do not believe that the tactics engaged in by the Greens senators, in attempting to shout President Bush down in the Australian Parliament, were appropriate. That's all.

Like all participants in the public debate, Rees has his own agenda. He criticised the US-led war against terrorism in Afghanistan, since each day of conflict is one less opportunity for dialogue between the two sides. And he opposed the coalition of the willing in Iraq, claiming that the real issue in the conflict turned on whether the world was to be governed from Texas and whether people would be obedient to the will of the White House or fear retribution if they failed to be obedient.

His book Passion for Peace (UNSW Press) will be launched by the actor and leftist activist Judy Davis tonight.

In the present debate, Rees and his supporters have become surprisingly shrill - for peace advocates, at least. Witness Rees's note of a phone conversation, which he supplied to the Herald and which was published last Saturday. Here Rees asserted that the Sydney Lord Mayor, Lucy Turnbull, had distanced herself from the 2003 prize because for her to take any other action was more than her husband's political life is worth.

This was a reference to Malcolm Turnbull's attempt to win Liberal Party pre-selection in the federal seat of Wentworth. A surprisingly misogynist comment circa 2003, to be sure. Yesterday on Sydney Radio 702, Ken Macnab, a member of the Peace Foundation's advisory committee, maintained that opposition to Ashrawi was centred on a particular newspaper and on individuals talking from a particular perspective. You've guessed it. He had in mind the Australian Jewish News and Jewish Australians. Fancy that.

Australians, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, should be entitled to query the credentials of the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize winner. Ashrawi is free to visit Australia and engage in public debate (she has a standing invitation to address the Sydney Institute). It's just that opponents of Ashrawi are free to state their case in advance of the award presentation. Provided that, unlike Brown and Nettle, they do not attempt to shout their political adversary down.

I met Ashrawi in July 1999 when we shared a platform at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas, where she put on a fine performance. In a private conversation she told me that she had always opposed the armed struggle in the Middle East. The impression was given that in her view, terrorism was counter-productive. This leads her critics to claim that her opposition to terrorism is only tactical.

Ashrawi's case is spelt out in her memoir This Side of Peace (Simon & Schuster, 1995). She does not much like the biography written about her by Barbara Victor titled A Voice of Reason (Harcourt Brace, 1995).

As a polemicist of long standing, she has spoken widely on a range of issues. Clearly, and properly, she is likely to play a significant role in any agreement which may result out of the proposed, but troubled, road map for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. In the meantime, Ashrawi is no committed peace activist. Unlike some Palestinians, she has not worked consistently with the Israeli peace movement. And she supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Moreover, Ashrawi's address to the (somewhat misnamed) World Conference Against Racism in Durban on August 28, 2001, was replete with the most virulent verbal attacks on Israel. Yet it contained not one skerrick of self-criticism from the Palestinian side. In short, this was not the address of a contemporary peacemaker.

The fact is that many individuals who accept peace prizes were one-time combatants or barrackers for combatants. In view of this, it would make sense for the powers that be to junk the Sydney Peace Prize before it causes more verbal conflict.